July 12, 2012

Real-estate agent Josh Lichy, 27, appreciated the rental crunch first-hand when he and his girlfriend were hit with a $300 increase, from $3,000 to $3,300 for their 750-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment at 160 Riverside Drive. “It’s too much. We want to have money to spend so we’re not rent-poor,” he said.

Rent-poor. That's derived from house poor, but quite different. If you're house poor, you're building wealth in the form of equity (unless prices fall). But a rented apartment isn't a repository of money set aside for the future. It's as gone as if you'd blown it on a European vacation.

As for small apartments in NYC, we've been talking about Mayor Bloomberg's competition for designing tiny apartments called "micro-units." Well, here's a NYT article about furnishing your micro-unit. It's bizarrely — mockingly — unhelpful, suggesting a chewable toothbrush, a very small dog, and growing plants on your wall in some doodad that hangs over the fireplace. Hello? Get a normal toothbrush. Don't keep any pets. And you won't even have a fireplace. But I love the idea — in the photo at the NYT link — of putting your handgun right there next to your objets on one of the étagères that flank the fireplace that you won't have in your micro-unit.

You mean rent control and zoning didn't solve all these problems? Who could have predicted that government intervention into keeping apartment prices artificially low, while at the same time increasing the cost to build and maintain, would result in scarcity driving up the price on apartments not subject to rent control? It must be all the bankers and speculators driving up prices. After all, we know full well that good intentioned politicians and bureaucrats never create more problems than they solve.

That there is Obama voter central. Rich people who purposefully make themselves much poorer out of ego, narcissism and infatuation with the ephemeral.

Why don't these compassionate types there ever consider that the unnecessary extra 2 grand they pay their landlord every month could help someone in need. It could save the life of one of the homeless they walk by everyday in the subway.

I like to think of the difference between the average rent in eral America rent in New York City as a tax on dumb. If one is bound and determined to live in one of the most unpleasant places imaginable, shouldn't one pay a price?

I have to say I share your derision of those who deploy the term "speculators". The word has a long and complicated history. Apparently the original root comes from ancient marxism and translates to English as "I'm economically illiterate"

$3,778? Oh, that's not too bad. Divide that by 12, and it's only $314.83 a month...

...oh, that's per month? For about a thousand square feet? For a rental?

I guess I'm just a dumb hillbilly, but I paid only about $1400 on my 15-year mortgage (before refinancing) on my 4000 square foot house with 40 acres two miles from Table Rock Lake. I guess I don't have all the culture of the West Side of Manhattan. That's okay--I have the Internet. That's better.

The last time I was in Manhattan I noticed that in listening to conversations in bars and restaurants that the level of Bush derangement and other leftist maladies of logic were stunning and homogeneous. Only other tourists I talked to seemed at all level headed. Despite that, I love Manhattan, but I have never been there in summer - maybe this year.

I love the history, the proximity of everything and the pure urban culture, but the city would be so much better if it had more political diversity. I just feel like I'm in some Alabama backwater surrounded by rubes of different persuasion. Similarly, you have to be careful what you say around the locals.

The furniture advice is ludicrous -- honestly, if you're in a space that tiny, you need to abandon fixed furniture. It's just too huge. Futon + coffee table is what you want, maybe a few small bookshelves and a stand for a TV. A real Japanese/Korean style futon too, not the weird foam things they call "futon" in the US. Fold the futon up and put it in the closet during the day, and tip the coffee table up against the wall during the night. Yes, it's not really in tune with American sensibilities. But when you've decided to live in a <300 sq ft apartment, American sensibilities are really compatible with the life you've chosen.

Want to know what happened? The financial crisis hit in 2008 (really May 2007, but let's not split hairs) and everybody stopped building and buying. All the people that would've bought began renting and the population continued to grow, but nothing was being built. It's going to take a few years to reach equilibrium so rents can flatten out.

That's all that happened.

No sinister plot by mustachioed villains.

I live in Manhattan and absolutely love it, despite the high prices and small apartment!

I don't know what getting rid of rent control would do to the market. Most of the rent stabilized housing stock is in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and far Upper Manhattan and in many cases the maximum allowable rent is at or above what the market would be for that particular unit.

If you abolished rent control tomorrow, in aggregate, rents would probably decrease slightly, but it wouldn't make a real difference in the statistics cited in the article.

FWIW, I work at an investment bank in the RE group and do a lot of work in stabilized, controlled, and free-market units in Manhattan.

I live in Manhattan and absolutely love it, despite the high prices and small apartment!

And the rats? And the roaches? And the bedbugs? And the piles of garbage, rotting in the fetid summer heat?

I like visiting Manhattan myself, but it's awfully dystopian -- there's a sense of mad, frenzied energy in the midst of a world that is slowly, ponderously, crumbling. Of huge monuments -- bridges, skyscrapers, subways -- bequeathed by a great old generation, all being ground down to ruin by their degenerate descendants.

The spider weaves the curtains in the palace of the Caesars;the owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab.

Rent isn't that bad around D.C. But even thinking of living in D.C. means a huge jump in rent. And living in a studio? Some places are $2k/mo. for a studio. If I ever think of doing that, I'll just buy a damn house.

You don't have to go quite as far as slarrow and Freeman Hunt to find reasonable housing prices. I am sure that Table Rock Lake is nice enough, but if you want a decent public school for your kids or restaurant choices beyond The Bearded Clam, you might want to set your sights in a little denser population. Some people also like to live in closer proximity to high quality medical care. God forbid you need a level 1 trauma center or cancer center, but you aren't going to find one near enough to Table Rock Lake or Freeman's area in Arkansas to be of any use.

I take it back. Table Rock Lake might be on the edge of the 1-hour zone for the level 1 trauma center in Springfield. So, slarrow might be OK if the weather is good. Freeman is stil out of luck though.

There are definitely some things I don't like about New York - rats (only really see those on the subway tracks), garbage (bad, especially in the summer), roaches (don't see any more of these than other people in other cities do, probably). Plus there are a million other pain in the ass things you have to deal with when you live with 8 million other people.

But walking out your door and walking a few blocks to (arguably) the best restaurants in the world, the best museums in the world, some of the coolest architecture in the world, interesting art and people everywhere, the best live shows in the world, etc. But I'm not a culture person, I like the restaurants.

I took my girlfriend (now wife) to a nice restaurant for her birthday a couple years ago. We had a late reservation and by the time we were wrapping up, it was just us and another table. The other table was Fergie (the duchess), Andrea Bocelli, and I guess some other opera singers. It was Fergie's birthday as well and Andrea Bocelli got up and sang to her for like 30 minutes. That was pretty cool.

I know there's a lot to hate about New York, but there are some very cool things about it too.

Not even a nice place to visit. You couldn't PAY me enough to get me to go there.....

I loved NYC every time I visited (although I admit the stand around for 4 hours to watch the ball drop thing was ill advised)! I am not a NY hater, but I would not want to live there unless I had scads of money.

I will say the NYers I went to school with are the most insular, 'NY is the only place in the world' kind of people I have ever met. There are so many places in this world. We aren't all going to like the same things.

Alas, no. No Bass Pro Shop near us. Cabela's is even a pretty good drive. But we can order stuff online.

Different priorities I guess. The chances that someone will need trauma care are pretty low overall, but if you or someone you care about needs it, then it's nice to know it's there.

Just don't get seriously hurt in Arkansas. It has a completely inadequate trauma system. The only coverage they do have is from helicopters Memphis, Missouri, and some ambulance coverage from Greenville, MS.

No one ever moves out of a rent-controlled apartment, and you'll never see one advertised for rent.

And it's hardly efficient. If you were living in a large three bedroom rent-controlled apt. that cost you $800./mo, would you move out just because you're now living alone- just so you could pay $2589./mo for a studio?

It's all but impossible to tear down an old low-rise building and replace it with a high-rise, what with the city's Byzantine permitting and regulations.

But if the apartments in there are rent-controlled then it's truly impossible, as the tenants have a right to live there for the remainder of their lives.

So, you'll have to bribe them to move elsewhere. And, no one's going to go first because everyone knows it's the last holdout who gets the best deal.

Perhaps the lesson here is, once you get a critical number of people who benefit from such laws, it's all but impossible to repeal them.

And if you try, courts just might decide that tenants in rent-controlled apartments have a property right in their lifetime tenancy?

IMHO, NYC's popularity has grown enormously due to the Friends TV series. And like the characters on that series which ended before the characters reached 35 years old, real life people also seem to leave NYC once they hit 30-35 years old and form a family.

Either the demand is up or the supply is down. I think to it's easy to assume that it is the demand that is driving the rents. This is a good thing. It means that the US's greatest city is alive and well. People are willing to pay the price to have world class conveniences, restaurants, entertainment, etc., within strolling distance. Good for them.

So I was arguing with some internet "liberal", who was complaining about Texas opting out of Obamacare. I mentioned it wasn't free healthcare and thus cost too much. He corrected me and said those a 4x poverty level would get subsidies via medicaid, thus millions would receive free healthcare.

So, about that poverty level... I live in Texas, have a 20yr mortgage for 2,300sq foot 4bdrm home and pay just $1200/month (slarrow has it better, I see). As Freeman mentions, I could get a nice home for $3500/month, but with my wife and I both make 6-figures; we don't feel like we can afford it. We do pay for are own healthcare, putting 2 girls through college, saving with the assumption we won't get social security, and giving 6% to charity (I know, a bit cheap there).

So how are these poor people in NYC, looking to get "free" healthcare because they are in poverty, affording to live in these apartments?

"BTW, there's no reason why the financial industry has to be so concentrated in Manhattan and the same is true of the TV networks."

But there is though, because, at least in finance, most deals are still done with face-to-face meetings. Trading public equities and other liquid instruments may be done over the phone, because everyone is agreed about what the value of those things are, but the basic credit markets transactions still function via face-to-face meetings (at least at first). And it's important to get to know people that you're going to be lending millions of dollars to and important to get to know people from whom you're buying millions of dollars worth of IOUs.

I don't want to start a whole thing here, but I'm picking up on a vibe that people are just coming to this thread to say negative things about a city they don't know anything about and don't like because of its politics. I especially like the comments where people come in and make a comment like they've got New York all figured out. And for the record, I'm a rightwing teapartying reactionary nutcase.

New York’s biggest investment houses are shifting jobs out of the area and expanding in cheaper locales in the United States, threatening the vast middle tier of positions that form the backbone of employment on Wall Street.

But walking out your door and walking a few blocks to (arguably) the best restaurants in the world, the best museums in the world, some of the coolest architecture in the world, interesting art and people everywhere, the best live shows in the world, etc. But I'm not a culture person, I like the restaurants.

I think New Yorkers habitually grossly overestimate the quality of their local facilities. That "arguably" is the saving grace in what you wrote there, but many New Yorkers -- particularly the ones who've never left New York City -- seem to think it's unambiguously true.

I would agree that the museums are the best in the United States, yes, but the great European museums (e.g. the Louvre, the Prado, the Vienna Art Museum, etc.) are better. And while the quality of food is good, you can easily get better elsewhere. Tokyo, for example, blows New York out of the water in terms of quality of food on every level, from the street food up to the haute-est haute cuisine (except for Italian food. I hate that meat jelly they always serve in Italian restaurants in Japan). And that's not just me -- Tokyo has several times as many Michelin stars as NYC. It's good that NYC's residents have an inflated view of their home city -- like with families and patriotism, everyone should be a bit delusional about how great the place they come from is -- but those of us who don't actually live in NYC can take a somewhat more objective view.

And as high as the rents are, just think about the fact that you generally have to come up with:

first month's rent, last month's rent, 1 month's security deposit. That's like $10k right there for a 1br.

And you have to show proof of income 50x the monthly rent - so for a $3,500/month apartment you have to make and show proof of $175,000 (or else have a guarantor). If you're looking for a $3500 1br, that's generally not a problem, but I'm just pointing out that not only are the rents high, but the requirements for renting are also high.

I will say the NYers I went to school with are the most insular, 'NY is the only place in the world' kind of people I have ever met. There are so many places in this world. We aren't all going to like the same things.

It's odd since the great things in NYC were built many years ago and they are just slowly grinding the city into nothingness.

NYC is looking a lot like Detroit just 20 years ago. And the politicians seem just as unable to face reality.

But if the apartments in there are rent-controlled then it's truly impossible, as the tenants have a right to live there for the remainder of their lives.

So, you'll have to bribe them to move elsewhere. And, no one's going to go first because everyone knows it's the last holdout who gets the best deal.

Perhaps the lesson here is, once you get a critical number of people who benefit from such laws, it's all but impossible to repeal them.

And if you try, courts just might decide that tenants in rent-controlled apartments have a property right in their lifetime tenancy?

Why do the property owners even keep the buildings open? Just refuse to support it any longer. Let them live in rent-control with nobody keeping up with the property. They can't make somebody stay in business...yet.

For a city governed by people who vote for people obsessed with "economic inequality", I can't think of many cities that have much less income equality than NYC.

When I went to India I rented out my 1200 square foot loft for 3200 which barely covered my mortgage and condo fees. 1200 square feet is considered pretty big in these them there parts. Also, it has parking. If I didn't have my car I could rent out my parking spot for 500 a month.

I prefer Continental/French-style to Japanese-style, but I'd still put the best Japanese restaurant in New York up against the best Japanese restaurant in Japan.

Also - we're now beyond arguing nonsense here, and I only point this out to alert you to the fact that there are many, many ratings out there - in the 2012 "The World's 50 Best Restaurants" there are 2 in the top 10 in New York and none in Japan - all of Japan.

You name some great museums in different cities and restaurants in other cities - take all the good stuff from all the great cities around the world - New York has all that, plus more, contained in one small, convenient island.

It's not New York jingoism that makes New Yorkers think it's the best city in the world - it legitimately is in many ways.

It's not New York jingoism that makes New Yorkers think it's the best city in the world - it legitimately is in many ways.

You pretty much are just demonstrating your 'ny jingoism' here. I don't mind the NYers liking where they live, but the constant 'NY is the best eleventy' comments are irritating, especially since they are generally coupled with the implication that everywhere else sucks. Nothing in NY can beat the Colorado mountains. Or the beauty of West Virginia, much as people like to make fun of it.

Some people like trees, grass, space...If that is the case NY is demonstrably NOT the best. (DC has pretty good museums too and they're free.)

I wonder how average people feel about living in NYC? I took the Staten Island ferry once, it was full of workers going home - I never saw so many miserable people. In fact, most of the average worker-bees I saw in NYC seemed stressed out and unhappy.

New York’s biggest investment houses are shifting jobs out of the area and expanding in cheaper locales in the United States, threatening the vast middle tier of positions that form the backbone of employment on Wall Street..."

If this is true then why are rents going up? If the financials are moving out this should dampen demand and rents should flatline or drop.

Just don't get seriously hurt in Arkansas. It has a completely inadequate trauma system. The only coverage they do have is from helicopters Memphis, Missouri, and some ambulance coverage from Greenville, MS.

Can you explain this more? What do you mean? There are tons of ambulances and helicopters around.

When I think "Manhattan," I don't think "Serpico." I think "youngest daughter on Downton Abbey, the homely one nobody remembers or cares about but she still thinks she's in competition with everyone else and is totally slam-dunkin' hashtag winning--but everyone else is like, 'we have our own shit to worry about. We don't care about your alleged superior culture or progressive intrusion into people's private lives. We're busy with our own thing. Oh, and, like, bedbugs. Get that sorted, would you?'"

And another thing, don't blame New York. Aside from all the people jammed in on top of each other, it's not much different than a thousand other places in the country. After all, you're not going to live in the museum and dine 5-Star every nite - no, you're going to scrounge around on the side streets like everyone else does.

And another thing, the real New Yorkers - the ones born in places like Hell's Kitchen and Little Italy - they left years ago. Next time you're in the city, just ask, they'll tell you: "Oh, no, I moved here from Indiana 4 years ago. Finally got a great little studio on Outer Reach Road in Brooklyn, only 12 blocks from the end of the 'D' line."

New York is just a bigger, dirtier, ruder version of San Fransisco except that SF has much better weather.

Do I like the City (SF) for the museums, shopping, theaters and restaurants. Sure. I do miss the restaurants. I don't miss the bums and panhandlers-- the whores-- the drug addled perverts on the buses--- the lack of space---- the constant noise from the people in the flat above or below you---- the yapping dogs----the loud booming music----- the traffic noise----- the feeling that you shouldn't really actually look at anyone or start up a friendly conversation because the person might be a danger to you. I miss none of that crap.

The only reason I go there now is to visit with some family that lives in the City. I dread it every time.

So to each his own. If you don't try to sell me on your cesspool, I won't try to sell on the hayseed sticks where I live. You aren't better than anyone else because you live in NYC and that condescending attitude is what annoys people about NYC.

Plus. When the shit hits the fan. The electronic pulses from the sun take down the grid or whatever.....all those museums aren't going to mean shit compared to our chickens, goats, gardens and fresh running water.

"Yes! Though, depending on who you work for, you may still have to chant something."

I'm in the david glass building and the home office all the time and thankfully never witnessed this. In the late 90's I did some work for Honda in Ohio and they started the day off with chants.

"Just don't get seriously hurt in Arkansas. It has a completely inadequate trauma system."My folks lived in Kimberling City in the 90's and my dad was airlifted from Branson to Springfield in a helicopter. Took about 10 minutes. As more and more people retire in Arkansas, the medical field follows them. You would be shocked at the level of care available in what used to be a dinky town in the middle of nowhere.

I live in NYC and, while out on parole, I have noted with alarm the decadent lifestyle of people in flyover country. They revel in such unimaginable luxuries as spare bedrooms and most even have their own washer-drier combo right in their habitation. You can't live like that without becoming squishy and corrupt. If you walk--not drive but walk--to a store ten minutes away. people look at you like you've taken leave of your senses....Well, live and let live, but I can't help but think an America peopled by such decadents awaits a sad fate.

Franklin-About Level 1 Trauma Centers, the ACS website has no listings for verified ones in NYC(?).http://www.facs.org/trauma/verified.htmlLooking at their listing, there are several states that show none and many have only 1-2, e.g., Wisconsin has 2. One in Madison and Milwaukee. Virginia has 2 also, right up there with WVa with 2. Kinda a severe limit on where one might live if that is a criteria.

It looks like Arkansas has made a major push in the past two or three years to improve its trauma system. The last time I looked at the system and the last data available from the Trauma System Map Arkansas had zero level I or level II trauma centers in the entire State. From news reports it looks like there was an initiative in 2010 to fix that. Good for Arkansas!

The key is to be within an hour's transport by ambulance or helicopter of a level I or level II trauma center. Arkansas was particularly sparse in 2009 with only 13% of the population in that zone and all of those centers were in other states. In contrast, Wisconsin covers 87% of its population. However, as I learned and mentioned above, Arkansas has made major improvements by developing a modern trauma network. It could be that the facilites existed with adequate capabilities, but that the formal network and designations had not been established.